Alleged murderer Warren Dhamarrandji ‘not a violent man’ but ‘kid in an adult’s body’: Court

Defence barrister Phillip Boulten SC said while Dhamarrandji ‘will be punished for what he did’, he was ‘not a normal, intact person’ and ‘probably never has been’. Latest from court.

Police investigate the scene in Jingili in December 2020. Picture: Che Chorley

A man who stabbed his partner to death after she threatened to leave him over ongoing domestic violence is not a murderer but “a kid in an adult’s body”, a court has heard.

In his closing submissions on Friday, Warren Dhamarrandji’s lawyer Phillip Boulten SC urged jurors to find him guilty of the “very serious crime” of manslaughter but not guilty of murder.

The Supreme Court previously heard the 39-year-old killed his 20-year-old girlfriend by stabbing her nine times at the Jingili Water Gardens in March 2020.

But Mr Boulten said while Dhamarrandji “will be punished for what he did”, he was “not a normal, intact person” and “probably never has been”.

“He was not like the vast majority of domestic violence offenders, he was not in control in the same way that those vast majority of offenders are in control,” he said.

“He would snap, he would lose it in situations where he was distressed and where he was angry and where he was emotionally overwhelmed.

“But whereas others have a great ability to know that they can’t act on these emotions, he did not have the same capacity to check himself.”

Mr Boulten said one of Dhamarrandji’s ex-girlfriends had agreed he “was like a child in a man’s body” — “but it’s more than that”.

“He didn’t have the ability to make sentences, not in writing, not in conversation much, only simple sentences, he certainly didn’t read books,” he said.

Mr Boulten rejected earlier submissions by Director of Public Prosecutions Lloyd Babb SC that the homicide was “premeditated”.

“What sort of plan was it to go there on a pushbike in broad daylight, in public, to pull out a knife and kill — that’s not a plan — this is redolent of impulse, not thinking through what he was doing,” he said.

“You can’t possibly conclude that he was thinking like a normal person on this day or that he had the same capacity to control himself as would a normal person, or 95 per cent, or 98 per cent of the population.”

Mr Boulten said his client had “struggled throughout his life” and “never really developed as an adult”.

“Warren Dhamarrandji is not a violent man, he’s a nice man,” he said.

“He’s not inherently violent but he was and he is to be punished — but the right verdict in this case, in my respectful submission, is manslaughter.”

The jury will now retire to consider its verdict after Justice John Burns sums up the case on Monday.

Alleged murderer ‘knew what he was doing’ in ‘ferocious’ attack, prosecution

A man who allegedly stabbed his partner to death in a “ferocious” and “abhorrent” domestic violence attack “knew what he was doing” and should be found guilty of murder, a court has heard.

Warren Dhamarrandji, 39, pleaded not guilty in the Supreme Court to murdering the 20-year-old woman, who cannot be named for cultural reasons, after prosecutors rejected a guilty plea to manslaughter last week.

Jurors heard the not guilty plea was based on the partial defence of “diminished responsibility” but in his closing address on Thursday, Crown prosecutor Lloyd Babb SC said the assault was “not a spontaneous eruption of emotion”.

Mr Babb said the killing involved “extreme domestic violence” in circumstances in which the woman had told Dhamarrandji she was leaving him and he had threatened to kill her in the preceding days.

“The accused tracked the deceased down and confronted her about whether she still intended to leave him and after the deceased confirmed that she was leaving the accused, he produced a large knife — instantaneously — and proceeded to violently attack her, stabbing her nine times,” he said.

“The attack was ferocious — and we know that — the track mark in the back was 12cm long, the penetrating wound to the chest went through bone and into the right ventricle of the heart.”

Mr Babb said after the slaying, Dhamarrandji had fled the scene before disposing of the knife and changing his shirt and then “evaded police detection for over an hour”.

“That conduct is completely consistent with the accused attempting to get away with a pre-planned stabbing,” he said.

Warren Dhamarrandji has pleaded not guilty to murdering his partner at the Jingili Water Gardens in 2020.

“Those are the efforts of a man trying to get away with the killing of his 20-year-old partner.”

Mr Babb said the Crown accepted Dhamarrandji “was operating well below the average intellectual capacity” but that his impairments fell short of an intellectual disability.

He said Dhamarrandji had previously “maintained employment for six years without incident” while obtaining a cert II qualification and driving forklifts.

“The Crown says that the evidence demonstrates that the attack on the deceased was pre-planned, premeditated and deliberate and that the accused’s motivation for engaging in the attack was that the deceased had ended her relationship with him,” he said.

“The evidence indicates that the attack was deliberate and pre-planned rather than as a result of a substantial loss of self control as a result of his intellectual capacity and the accused understood what he was doing.

“It’s a simple concept — he produced the knife and he plunged it into the body of the deceased nine times.”

Dhamarrandji’s lawyer Phillip Boulten SC will address the jurors on Friday morning before they begin their deliberations early next week.

Originally published as Alleged murderer Warren Dhamarrandji ‘not a violent man’ but ‘kid in an adult’s body’: Court